A 31-year-old woman who is a frontline healthcare worker wrote TJC about her concern for the lack of language services in Tennessee. She worked at one of Nashville’s first Covid-19 test sites, translating patient instructions into Spanish.
She knows people who have been racially discriminated against while receiving healthcare. She’s also noticed that there aren’t sufficient healthcare services in her community, specifically in the fields of behavioral health, counseling, and therapy.
She would like to tell her politicians, “Please start enforcing Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act. There are countless healthcare facilities that do not offer or provide language services, which is a violation of federal law.”